Spec. Ed. Rules Pose Problems for Charter Schools

Charter schools, a movement whose mantra is deregulation, have come
up against one of the most heavily regulated areas in all of public
education: special education. Not surprisingly, the fit is often less
than comfortable.

Eric Premack, who often provides charter schools with technical help
as the director of the Charter Schools Project at the Institute for
Education Reform in Sacramento, Calif., sums it up this way: "Square
peg, round hole."

As more and more states move to enact charter school laws, special
education has often been treated mostly as an afterthought. No one
really has a handle on how many children with disabilities are enrolled
in charter schools nationally or how well they are being served.

Many charter school operators have felt overwhelmed, or at least
unprepared, in dealing with special education procedures. And with so
many questions surfacing, some states and the U.S. Department of
Education are scrambling to offer help.

"This should have been on the radar screen much earlier," said
Margaret McLaughlin, an associate director of the Institute for the
Study of Exceptional Children and Youth at the University of Maryland
at College Park.

Yvette Melendez Thiesfield, a consultant to the Connecticut
education department who works on charter school issues, said there is
widespread confusion.

"Everyone's scratching their heads about this," she said. "Every
charter school conference I attend now has a seminar on special
education, but there are never any real answers."

Though they are intended to operate free from most of the
bureaucratic constraints of regular public schools, charter schools
must grapple with a multitude of state and federal special education
laws and regulations. Those rules govern everything from how special
education students are identified and evaluated to specific training
requirements for the teachers and other professionals who serve
them.

Most observers agree that charter schools, just like traditional
public schools, must serve disabled students. But beyond that basic
principle, the details of how these independent schools must do so are
anything but clear.

Many charter schools operate on a shoestring budget and lack the
financial and administrative support of a district behind them. As a
result, they may be especially vulnerable to costly legal disputes with
parents who are well-versed in the rules that protect the rights of
children with disabilities.

Question of Access

More than 450 charter schools are now up and running in the 25
states and the District of Columbia that have laws permitting them, and
the movement is expected to grow.

Though many reports have concluded that charter schools draw a
diverse student body, reliable national figures on special education
enrollment in charter schools are not readily available.

Even on a smaller scale, there are conflicting data. Some research
shows that charter schools enroll disabled children at rates on a par
with traditional public schools in their states or neighboring school
districts. Other reports suggest that such children are
underrepresented in charter schools.

In Massachusetts' 22 charter schools, 12 percent of the 5,465
students enrolled were identified as needing special education,
compared with the statewide average of 17 percent, according to a
recent state education department report.

A 1995 Southwest Regional Laboratory report on California charter
schools concluded: "There is modest support for the possibility that
charter schools are underserving special education students."

And a report released last week on Minnesota charter schools
indicated that they have a higher proportion of special education
students than students in the districts where those schools are
located. ("General Satisfaction With
Minn. Charters Documented," This Week's News.)

Skewing the picture are charter schools that explicitly serve
students with disabilities, such as the Metro Deaf Charter School in
St. Paul, Minn., and the Macomb Academy in Clinton Township, Mich.,
which targets students with a range of cognitive disabilities. Many
other charter schools target "at risk" students.

Because proponents have touted the diversity of charter school
enrollment in areas such as race, socioeconomic status, and academic
ability, any suggestion that they are less than all-embracing engenders
heated debate.

"There's a real reticence to talk about this kind of stuff," said
Joseph R. McKinney, an associate professor of education at Ball State
University in Muncie, Ind., whose work on charter schools and special
education has rankled some charter proponents. "A lot of these people
are strict ideologues."

Guidance Coming

In interviews with Arizona charter school operators and other
research conducted last year, Mr. McKinney found that only 17 of the 46
operating charter schools reported serving disabled children. And, he
reports, most charter school administrators did not understand federal
and state special education laws and procedures.

His conclusion: Children with disabilities do not have equal access
to charter schools.

The federal Education Department has received so many questions on
charter schools and special education that the agency plans to issue
guidance soon on some of the most common queries.

Among them are: Must every charter school be accessible to students
in wheelchairs? Do parents of charter school students relinquish their
rights under the federal law that regulates the education of disabled
students?

"The nature of the questions being asked gives us a level of concern
where we feel we have to give policy guidance," said Thomas Hehir, the
director of the department's office of special education programs. "We
don't do that lightly."

In light of parental complaints and confusion among charter school
educators, states such as Arizona are beefing up their technical
assistance on special education: hosting seminars, issuing how-to
publications, and becoming more vigilant in reviewing charter
applications, said Kathryn A. Lund, Arizona's director of
exceptional-student services.

In just two years, roughly 17,000 students have enrolled in about
160 Arizona charter schools--one-third of the nation's total. The
state's 1994 charter law is considered the most hands-off in the
nation.

In many states, special education experts did not have a hand in
crafting the charter school plan before it was made law, said Martha J.
Fields, the executive director of the National Association of State
Directors of Special Education in Alexandria, Va.

So with charter schools as in other areas of education, "we're in a
position of having to go back and point out the oversight and ask that
the process be retrofitted to consider children with disabilities," Ms.
Fields said.

But many charter school proponents question whether strict adherence
to special education rules, with their elaborate classification
systems, screenings, and regulation, is necessary.

Learning To Cope

Nowhere was the confusion more evident than at a charter school
conference in New York City last month at Teachers College, Columbia
University.

While most of the participants sat through sessions on governance,
finance, and assessment, a few would-be charter organizers gathered in
a drafty classroom for a three-hour seminar on "exceptional education"
issues.

"To be honest, we haven't really considered any of this," Helen
Hawkins, a charter school organizer from Chicago, said when the session
was over. "It just throws a whole new dimension on our budget, our
building, and everything."

Ms. Hawkins, who has spent three decades in education, most recently
as the principal of an alternative school, has received preliminary
approval from the city for a charter school targeting at-risk middle
school students.

Later in the day, during a small discussion group, one New Jersey
educator offered a sobering view of the current state of affairs. The
word on special education, he said, from charter school operators in
other states is: "What you do is sit down with the parents and discuss
reality and hope they don't sue you."

But educators in states where charter schools are more established
have come up with affordable ways to cope. Some schools in California
and Massachusetts have formed cooperative agreements, either by sharing
specialized staff members with other charter schools or by contracting
with neighboring districts for some special education
services.

Concerns Remain

At the Boston Renaissance Charter Public School, about 11 percent of
the 1,069 students are eligible for special education. When the K-8
school opened in Boston in September 1995, administrators realized they
had underestimated the number of special education students. Some
parents had not disclosed the fact that their children had
disabilities.

"Many people thought, well, if they see this, they'll never let me
in the [admissions] lottery. Parents, I think, were fearful,"
Headmaster Barbara Wager said. "And for the better part of a year we
struggled."

Anecdotal reports of charter schools telling parents of disabled
children "we don't do special education" have circulated, but the
Education Department's Mr. Hehir and others say it is unlikely that
disabled children are being widely excluded. But concerns remain about
the more subtle ways in which the schools can discourage disabled
students.

"It's real clear what to do to make your life easier--and it's
immoral," Ms. Wager said. "You could adopt a take-us-or-leave-us
attitude, and that's a real danger. ... Do you take the same time in
taking the parent of a kid with a special need around the school or
not?

Point
Five of President Clinton's 10-point plan for education outlines
his goals for expanding school choice and charter schools.

Charter School Research. A Web
site dedicated to charter schools. Its goal is to provide a
comprehensive catalog of charter school-related materials on the
Internet and "to cross as many boundaries as possible while enabling
inquiry, communication, critique, and justifiable experimentation."
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